Glacial Depths
by AltruisticThoughts
Summary: The cloned Jedi Padawan Sia Masuqua delves into her past to find the truth of her origins on the frozen planet Hoth. Enjoy, my first piece here! Harsh criticism welcomed, if I need work, please, I'd love for you to tell me! Helpful reviews cherished!


Sia's air-speeder rattled like the creaking hull of a water-logged ship, skirting over the densely frozen terrain of Hoth: ice, and snow, and permafrost, choking out as it passed over short, jutting rock formations, and dislodged the solid snow with it's

Sia's air-speeder rattled like the creaking hull of a water-logged ship, skirting over the densely frozen terrain of Hoth: ice, and snow, and permafrost, choking out as it passed over short, jutting rock formations, and dislodged the solid snow with it's wailing engine.

The first and last of this planet's glory days had been seen in a single hellish moment of Imperial Assault, the only memorials to the conflict the frozen dead buried in the ground, a monument to the ages, and the ages alone. Like everything about Hoth, the memory was dead. Dead and cold.

"Miss Masuqua," the even-toned AI construct plugged into the console said softly, the elder male voice in a constant state of tranquil reassurance and constructive criticism. "The snowstorm seems to be having horribly adverse effects on the speeder, and you still haven't plugged in a destination. Flying blind on Hoth is not advised; if you turn back now, you can return to the docking station, and return when the storm has passed."

"Thanks, but no thanks, Leo," Sia sighed, pulling her gloves tight; her grey winter coat made movement a squeaky, awkward noise inside the cockpit. "And I know precisely where I'm going. Why don't you power down a bit? Perhaps with the extra energy conservation, I might just make it where I'm headed after all?"

"My calculations don't seem to agree... oh. I see." The AI construct sounded almost hurt, but it was used to the abuse. "Very well, you didn't have to be condescending Miss Masuqua..."

"Sorry Leo," she said, tapping a key on the console, as the voice powered off. "I'm flying solo on this one."

A display popped up on the console, a 3d Topographical Map of Hoth displayed on a wonky projection, with flittering graphics whirling over the ground, including a miniature air-speeder imitating the same motions of Sia's. A new spot was marked, labeled 'Unknown Architecture, sentient design, minimal / no life signs.'

Gripping the controls, Sia dipped the air-speeder down to the ground level, feeling the entire console rattle, the mechanics growling back, rebelling against any deviation from simple maneuvers. The controls locked, and she raised her hands, scoffing as the ship plummeted; the icy surface of Hoth began closing in uncomfortably fast.

Putting her foot against the dash in front of her, she gave a tug at the stubborn controls, then a full-out yank; the reluctant speeder jerked back to it's sense a moment too late, as it skittered into the snow and ice of the surface. Sia slammed into the console, and the small craft buried itself halfway into the snow, thoroughly wrecked; the controls sparked. Icy, relentless blizzard winds blew in through the shattered cockpit window, as blood trickled down onto the remains of the console...

Whether it had been minutes or hours, it was a mystery to Sia; the zombie of a girl staggered through the blinding, stinging snow, blood frozen to a clot on her forehead, her injured arm tucked into her chest as she limped. The pained path was that of instinct, buried into the recesses of her mind, somewhere deep, untouched by logic, unstirred by faith, untapped by rational thought.

It was the path of her childhood, so buried away like the frozen dead of Hoth; in her sleep-like stupor, she had begun to scratch, began to slam her frost-bitten fists against the ice, began to dig. Inch by inch, she carried herself through the rocky passes, and over the snow, until her lungs began to feel like ice, her skin brittle, her mouth dry.

Sia fell face-first into the snow, blood sticking into it, renewed to life from it's cold, clotted state. She dug her fingers like animalistic claws into the ground, and wrenched herself to her knees, staring at the door. A door: The frozen door.

The great metal blast door sat motionless, it's dark metal alloy a frozen monolith, caked over with years of ice. For most, it was immovable as the mountains; but an innate flame rumbled in the depths of Sia's heart, burning away the ice of her clouded past.

Raising both hands forward, the dying, freezing Sia shrieked, frigid tears tracing their way down the teenager's cheeks, as she clenched her nails into her palms. The ice began to rumble, then it began to shake. In a crackling explosion, the shards of ice came raining down from the door, as the terminal beside it whirred to life again.

Shambling to her feet, the blood trickling down from her palms sealed into her gloves, Sia squinted past her freezing tears at the terminal. The shape of a human hand rested on the control panel, blinking with 'access pending identification' printed above it. Biting a glove and yanking it off, she mashed her hand against the panel, feebly finding the shape of the hand, smudging blood against the panel as she groaned.

"Access granted," a computer's voice chirped back; the doors shuddered, then gave way, slowly revealing the complex deep beneath the snow, and ice, and hell of Hoth.

She had dislodged a great spear of ice from the mantle above her world, and it would impale everything she had ever believed.

Sia shuddered, expecting the harsh cold of Hoth's snow; as she awoke, she couldn't retain a pleasant sigh, the frosty weight of near death dislodging itself from her ribs as she breathed freely in the warmth of the complex, her back against the hard tile floor, her arms spread wide.

Sitting straight, she bit at her lip to handle the aching pains all over her body, a habit she had developed some time ago, before even her training had begun. Touching her forehead, she brought down her hand, noting the blood on her fingers, the nail marks in her palm.

"Wow..." she whispered softly to herself, checking herself over; there was an uncomfortable pain in her arm, and what felt like massive bruising in every swollen joint of her body. She was lucky, crashes into the dense earth of Hoth usually turned out worse.

Staggering up to her feet and nursing her injured arm to her body, she began to turn around slowly, sizing up the complex around her. The metal blast door was shut, the tile floors were marked with her boot prints, and melted ice that had fallen from her, bloody hand-prints still on the wall panels. Bright industrial lights illuminated it all, and a far airlock, labeled 'Hall 1: Securities, and Hall 2: Research and Development/Subject Living Quarters.'

"Scientists, then..." Sia muttered, touching the keypad; it made a slight pinging noise, before a small screen popped up; the girl's bright blue eyes suddenly lit up as a laser scanned them down where she stood. She blinked a few times, as the door slid open in the same manner as the entrance.

Shedding her winter coat, and hanging it near the entrance, she straightened out her linen robes, adjusting her belt and the small trinkets attached to it. Her lightsaber dangled with her movements, and she kept her right hand near it out of habit.

The 'Securities' Hall was littered with old, but still functioning cameras, and a few one-way mirrors. An insecure feeling tingled in Sia's spine, a dark, cursed tremor in her nerves. The feeling was nearly enough to make her want to turn back, but the scarier realization came as she felt a depraved, primitive urge to seek it out.

"Just a bit farther," she told herself softly, something stirring in her body that hadn't been shaken since her childhood. "I'm just going to get answers, nothing more..."

The mirrors began to blur, and her footsteps doubled, a staggering, toppling stance now. The squeaks of her boots against the floor echoed through the corridor as if for eternity, her luminescent eyes gleaming in the reflections in an inhuman manner that frightened even her: they had never been natural, but they had never been like this.

She fell to the floor, suddenly letting out a yelp, a pang of fear and agony striking through her body, as if she had been stabbed in the gut, then pricked with an anesthetic needle just after. She felt numb, but tingly, distant, but so very clear. She put a hand to the mirror, and began to haul herself from the ground. She gaped at the sight, losing her breath.

Her eyes were like burning azure lightsabers, barely a pupil visible past the sea of pure blue iris, hazed like the air about a flame. Smoke trailed from her forehead, from her hand, and a burn ran through her bones; she felt her skin sweltering, but she couldn't feel the pain. For a moment, she was sure she was bubbling, and melting away where she stood, and she began to whimper softly, clenching her eyes shut.

Then, all was clear. She opened her eyes, and saw clearer than ever before. There was no blood on her forehead, no blood on her palm, no pain in her joints. No dazed thoughts, no blurred vision; clarity, brilliance, normality. Her even, unscarred, unfreckled skin almost glistened, as if she had just left the shower.

She touched her face just about her eyes; a gleaming luminescence remained, as it always was at night. She could still smell seared, burning flesh in the air as roasted meat in a fire, and she could still spy the trail of wispy smoke being sucked into the air vents above.

"What is this wickedness?" she asked her reflection, feeling more than ever now, a dark power within her, pumping through her veins with the rhythm of her very own heart; it was a feeling that made her knees to buckle, her stomach to churn, her chest to heave.

It was an evil she had buried away so long ago, so very far away: it was just yesterday, it seemed, just right there in the halls. She could still hear the children screaming, she could still smell the burning flesh, see the flash of crimson red sabers in the darkness. She saw clearly now what she saw clearly then, the death, the depravity, the deep glacial depths of the darkness before her, the darkness around her, the darkness inside her.

With an oddly even-keeled balance that broke from her previously stupefied stagger, Sia strolled through the halls, a deep sense of worry pronounced through her eyes. She kept her hand at her saber, barely blinking as she reached the final airlock door, which hissed open, detecting her presence. The red sensor above seemed to stare her down, and size her up, unraveling and contorting her fears in it's eye. She stepped past it, glancing back before the doors snapped shut.

What lay before her shook the wind from her once again. Great cylinders of glass and crystal lined the walls, some still filled with a bluish transparent liquid to the brim, others shattered, others emptied and dusted. Control panels lay in the middle, dead bodies still held to them, decayed and burned, tarnished by years of decomposition.

There was a stale air about the room. What disturbed Sia even more profoundly than the corpses or the holding tanks befitting the clones of old, or the dark aura that emanated from it all, was a warm fuzzy feeling in her chest, even in such a dank place. She was home again.

Stepping gingerly over the bodies, some marked still with the strikes of a lightsaber's blade, she began to read off the numbers attached to the tanks. '00239,' '00240.' She remembered the tattooed string of digits seared into her shoulder, identical to that printed into the glass of the final tank. '00241.' She put her palm to the glass, and placed her head against it, tears brimming around her eyes.

The dark aura suddenly returned, full-force to break the sentimental moment. A hand touched her right shoulder, a condolence to her tears; she quickly stifled them, and began to turn, before the grip squeezed, holding her still.

"Easy, now," a male voice chided; something about it was so familiar, yet so alien: somewhere in the schizophrenia, Sia stayed her hand, keeping it only firm on the saber, still clipped to her belt. "You wouldn't strike down your brother, would you now, Sia?"

She spun around, staring straight into the burning yellow eyes, the pale, perfect, symmetrical face, the long shaggy hair. Were the young man not older by a few years, or marked by a few eerie similarities, they might have been twins of opposing gender.

"That is what they call you now, isn't it? Sia Masuqua, the promising Padawan of the Jedi Order," The deep, resounding voice carried such a suddenly recognizable overtone, Sia was surprised she hadn't at first seen it in her own tongue. "For any mere human, I'd almost be proud... but I assume you know now, that isn't who you are, two-four-one."

Her eyes narrowed into his, serene blue ocean into blazing yellow starfire. He wore black robes, much like the Sith Apprentices, and a lightsaber hung at his hip.

"A reunion... how sweet, dear sister. I apologize, I shouldn't call you by number, yet it's a curse I've had to bear now for twenty-one years now. You may have escaped, but I had to remember it all. It is heartwarming that our beloved Sia is no longer a number, even if it is a extravagancy I cannot afford myself.."

"There are others?" Sia squeaked, her eyes becoming more timid, more afraid.

"Were." The man's eyes told of the savage, bloody tolls of death, better than the bodies themselves. "We are all that is left of the blood-line, Sia. You and I."

"Who... who built us?" she asked, regaining a bit of volume to her voice.

"Machines are built, sister; nay, we were born. Is it a truth you wish to discover? Our parents?"

There was awful silence, and the man gazed soulfully into Sia's eyes, an understanding shared by a joined past. They were truly siblings, if not only by blood, then at least by the scars born through their minds.

"I must know..." she said, choking over tears. "I have to know..."

He nodded solemnly, offering a hand to a far door, etched with strange hieroglyphics, built in such an ancient way of odd contrast to the grayscale of science and industry that it stuck out like a bonfire in a snowstorm.

"Here lies the answer, if you wish to pursue, little sister," he said softly into her ear, gently guiding her forward with a hand to the small of her back; enthralled by the visions of her childhood running through her head, it was all she could do to gape and wonder.

He lead her to the door, where the strange insignias began to jog memories in Sia's mind. "They're... Sith?" she asked quietly, her eyes growing wide as she looked back at him.

"Yes... taken from runes in the scattered debris of Korriban; most of them are of some form of Sith Alchemy, ancient calligraphy intended to summon dark power."

Sia shuddered as the door creaked open, ratcheting back on ancient chain mechanisms. Inch by inch, it gradually revealed a truly magnificent aura of bright red. It finally stopped, where the young man ushered his sister forward, and embraced her with his left arm, smiling deviously. "Here lies the truth of our bloodline, dearest Sia. Here lies the truth of your destiny."

There was a great metal chest bolted to the floor, covered in winding, sharpened insignias and emblems of stone, trimmed with bright silver. A great crystalline shape stood in the middle, just four feet high, an arched, clear gem, radiating a deep shade of red. A heat grew from it as they stepped closer.

On either side of the arch, two chambers opened with the same ancient method of the door, before a pair of holocrons, a pyramid, and a cube rose up from the depths, emblazoned with fiery red. Sia trembled slightly, as the man began to speak proudly of their origins.

"We were fathered by science, crude descendants of many races, all drawn to the power of this artifact, inspired by the knowledge of the holocrons; in the end, our paternity was weak, and pitiful. They were unfit to be blessed by our presence, let alone control us; when they tried to fit their sons and daughters on the chains, they perished as could only be the answer... unfortunately, they took many children with them. Only you escaped, and only I survived..."

Sia shook her head, and started backing away; the man pinned her to the wall by her throat, and turned her face toward him. "Don't turn away from it! It's who you are, Sia!"

She stood still as stone, paralyzed by a deep, dark fear in her gut.

"While we were fathered by the ignorance of fools, our mother showed us the knowledge, the true, undeniable power of the dark side than flows through your veins, just as blood. Through ages of perfection and strife, this is where it led, this is where all roads wind toward. This is the new age of the Sith! We are the new age, we are the children of the Master of Old! We are Sith, and we are strong!"

"No!" Sia shrieked, throwing him off; he hurtled back into the wall, sliding down to the floor, cackling. She looked down at her own hands, still quaking.

"You see, sister? It has been awakened! This is the true power you have been blessed with! You cannot deny what you feel in your heart!" he raised up almost in levitation to his feet, as Sia began to flee back toward the doors.

The airlock was sealed; she banged her hands against it, breathing heavily. The cackles of her brother followed across the chamber; she slowly turned to face him, unclipping her saber, and holding it at her side.

"I don't want to hurt you!" she said, tears still rimming her eyes. "Don't come near me! Open this door, right now!"

His eyes glimmered with a mean, predatory sense, as his grin widened. His lightsaber ignited, redder than the molten rivers of Mustafar, burning with renewed fire.

"If you will not accept your heritage," he said, watching her take a step back. "Then I will show you the true power of it, I will force you to see things my way!"

Sia ignited her saber in turn, holding up the shining blue blade in front of her, hands clenched, knees bent. Though she knew only the basics, only a Padawan, something stirred in her. She began to see sharper, move more nimbly, understand his path so much clearer.

He raised a hand, lightning crackling from his fingertips; bringing up her blade in front of her, Sia held back the electricity, feeling odd sparks jolt through her body anyway, her face electrified slightly as she fought through the pain. Finally tossing her saber forward, she extended her own hand, a wave of energy knocking her brother off balance. He staggered back into the control panel, smiling back with yellowed teeth.

Charging forward, he struck at her, lightning-fast strokes of the blade; moving back with vigorous foot-work, Sia deflected the blows, with a side-to-side motion, before turning on one foot, and striking out at his ribs before spinning away. He flinched, the tip of her saber, piercing through his robes; grinning widely again as smoke rose from the wound, he cackled. "It will take more than that, little sister!"

His strikes became wild, furious; past his humorous demeanor, he became like an animal, his face contorted, his eyes clenched, his grip tight on the saber as he smacked away her blade again, and again. Taking an opportunity to evade, Sia made a flip back onto the control panel, jamming a boot into the man's jaw.

She came down with a thump, falling off balance, her saber clattering down to the floor. He rose up, his lip healing just as it had before; with his saber raised, he prepared to give the coup de grace as he fell toward her.

Sticking a foot into his ankle, Sia brought him down on top of her; she squeezed a hand onto his lightsaber hand's wrist, and began throwing quick, vicious punches into his face to roll him off. Leaning back, and slamming his forehead forward, he cracked against her face with a nasty thump.

Driving her knee up into his groin, she fell off, holding her face as he gasped, tumbling the either direction. As she looked up, she spied her saber, and summoned it back to her grip. Taking to her feet, she turned just in time to deflect the blow of the airborne Sith before he slid to a halt beside her, his face in a grimace.

"If you shall not accept it, you will die like the others!" he hissed, striking with renewed fury; she deflected each in turn, barely avoiding death with each slash.

Their sabers came together in a brilliant light, as they both locked swords, and stared into eachother's eyes, both straining, both glimmering with sweat. She screamed suddenly, and pushed him forward; he stumbled back and pivoted on one foot, just as the saber jammed through his back.

The man gasped, and staggered, turning into the final slash. With the yell of a cornered animal, Sia carried through on her strike. Her brother's head fell beside his body, and his lightsaber hissed off one final time, rolling away from his limp hand.

She fell sitting beside the body, turning off her saber, and covering her mouth; the body stood still, smoking at the neck where the wound had been cauterized by the brilliant heat of the blade. She scooted back, closing her eyes, and gently sobbing.

She was the last of a breed of darkness, the creation of evil, the bastard child of modern science and ancient magic. For the first time in her life, she felt utterly alone, utterly lost. She felt the depravity, the deepest levels of darkness in her soul.

The way back to Coruscant was a blur; by air-speeder in the complex's hangar, she made it back to the station from whence she came, and took off in her ship, leaving the icy, hollow land beneath her. Even in the void of space, so far from it all, she could feel it.

It was one with her; she knew it. She could tell no one, she could not let it take over. The darkness in her had to be fought, the sickening origin had to be hidden. She masked her aura, and blacked out her soul, lest anyone see into the abyss that was destined to consume her.

She could still feel the burn of the numbers etched into her back, as if it had been only moments ago seared into her flesh. 00241. Those five digits marked the only path she could see in her future, the mark of her past, the mark of her future. Her mark was the hieroglyph of the modern monster, the perfected instrument of death.

As she left into the stars, back to Coruscant, she kept the wicked truth behind her, but it all began to crumble before her eyes...


End file.
